Adverts

Sorry to break with tradition, but I cannot fucking stand adverts these days.

I saw an advert the other day, which made me sit through an emotional rollercoaster of childhood/father moments to the background of a sad/melancholy/happy/positive/negative song by some cunt with an acoustic guitar, and then I was told to buy a fucking car.

Has anyone been a 'test audience' for one of these adverts? Have they been informed that simply showing the car and putting a competetive price to it is a much, much better way of selling a vehicle?

Fucking women in advertising, no doubt. You'll back me up won't you blacky? Course you will *pats head*.

I believe advertising agencies' main intention is to produce better ads than other agencies, thereby winning various awards - and they can use this to promote themselves in gaining more contracts. Actually selling stuff is secondary.

I think the hidden message of all these airy-fairy, arty-farty car ads is "Please buy one of our cars! Our cars look much like every other manufacturers' cars, go, cost and break down occasionally much like other manufacturers' cars and comply with exactly the same safety and environmental standards as other manufacturers' cars*. So here are some pretentious videos and music to distract you from this tedious and depressing fact."

*Except for Audis of course, which have the distinction of being driven by consistently arrogant twats.

But why do companies waste millions of pounds on these fucking mini-dramas? It's not the in the companies best interests to fund an award winning advert, they'll get none of the praise.

Best adverts are around the superbowl. Funny sells.

I honestly think the sad/happy imagery and music is a real concern. I mean, it's like the advertisers are bereft of a soul and cannot distinguish between human emotions. Happy does not equal sad, and vice versa.

I blame 'One Born Every Minute' and shite like that.
(A) Why are people letting cameras film them shitting themselves, crying, and pushing cords out of their fannies?
(B) Why are people watching it?
(C) Why are people watching it and crying?
(D) Why are you seeking 'entertainment' on a weekday evening that makes you cry, and yet you'll be the first twat to turn the telly channel over if there's a heart-breaking documentary on suffering in Rwanda etc?
(E) Perhaps OBEM is missing a trick by not asking these sobbing twats to 'text in' their hashtag status at £3 a text that can trickle down the end credits.

What was that advert, Hare and Bear, from John Lewis. I literally just had to Google 'Hare' because that was all I could recall, and then it reminded me it was John Lewis. Shithouse campaign, again they've lost the plot between happy/sad and the net result is just some awkward smiles and a few tears and people saying "how lovely" that advert was. Honestly, adverts, I don't know whether to laugh, cry or cum these days.

What really pisses me off is that some bastards must sit around discussing how good / annoying the ads are, then agree on some sensationalist crap that is bound to get under our skin. What they do not seem to appreciate is that the audience gets a whole load of sensationalist crap ads all together for increasing amounts of time and most annoyingly at higher volume than the program being watched, driving us mental.

Not far from the old Max Headroom Blipverts I think. Maybe we should subject them to some viscious satire. What I particularly despise is those aimed at old people to get them to cough up for getting buried so that their family does not get to pay, disgusting lack of priciples I think.

I mostly mute out the ads, which serves even more to reveal how crap they are. The trouble is I usually miss a bit of the program I want to watch.

I do the same GdS, straight onto mute if I can help it. Or even better, before a programme starts on Sky+ I will pause it, then go make a cuppa or have a smoke, have a shit, or a shower, and then come back in and press play. Hey presto, i get 10 minutes of leeway to fast forward through 2 or 3 sets of ad breaks.

I would call that an unadvertisement rather than product placement within a thread.

(I wonder if Audi are like Rebecca and will insist on trying to tell us that there is an Audi dealer just three miles away? Thought for the day: would you rather shag Rebecca or be seen driving an Audi?)

In a previous life I did a bit of research for Sleepmaster bed shops and other shops in the group, as an extra we threw in data from their Harveys furniture stores. They take customers postcodes so we were able to analyse many millions of bits of data and link them to the customers' Mosaic socio-demographic profile. One of the extra gobbits of info was that Harvey's customers were less likely to be influenced by TV ads and less likely to watch soap operas.
When we went to present our findings to the group's CEO announced that Cadbury's had pulled out and their agency had just managed to grab the sponsor slot for Coronation Street for only £20m a year.
Do you think the agency did the research too? (No)

Before the web really took off there used to be "above the line" and "below the line" advertising. Above the line (TV, radio, cinema, print) meant the agency recieved commission based on the total cost of the media. Obviously any agency is going to recomend ATL. Marketing managers measure the size of their cocks by their spending.
Below the line (Customer relationship bulding, couponing, PR etc.) is hard work and measurable. There is no commission and it's not glamorous. The award ceromonies are shit.

So there you go. Award winning TV adverts are great for the director/film maker (Ridley Scott did the Hovis/Gold Hill ad for example). They are great for the agency - they get commission. They are great for the marketing manager - they get Kudos.